Gun conviction upheld for former police officer

The Massachusetts Appeals Court yesterday upheld the conviction of a Bellingham man who had been found guilty by a Wrentham District Court jury of improperly storing a gun.

Brian Benson/Daily News staff

The Massachusetts Appeals Court yesterday upheld the conviction of a Bellingham man who had been found guilty by a Wrentham District Court jury of improperly storing a gun.

The conviction of Eustace Patterson, 46, grew out of a domestic dispute in Franklin in 2009, according to court documents. After getting a 911 hang-up call on Jan. 27, 2009, police went to 48 Forest St. in Franklin, where Patterson lived with his girlfriend and her two children.

Police entered the home and saw an empty gun holster on the kitchen floor. Patterson then entered the kitchen from the living room and a crying 5-year-old girl told them, "He pushed Mommy into the wall and he had a gun," according to court documents.

Patterson told police he was a police officer, saying he was unarmed and had left an unloaded gun in a jacket in an upstairs closet. In a jacket pocket, police found an unloaded Smith & Wesson .38 caliber handgun with six rounds of ammunition in the same pocket, according to a police report.

Patterson later told police that he and his girlfriend had gotten into an argument in the kitchen when the holstered gun fell out of a jacket pocket, hit the floor and came out of its holster. Patterson said he never pointed it at his girlfriend and only handled the gun to carry it upstairs to put it in a coat pocket, according to the report.

Patterson, who now lives at 50 Douglas Drive, Bellingham, was a police officer at Wellesley College. He was fired in February 2009 after the college conducted an internal investigation stemming from the incident, according to a letter from Police Chief Lisa Barbin included in court documents.

A Wrentham District Court jury convicted Patterson on the gun charge and acquitted him of a charge of assault and battery. A charge of witness intimidation was dismissed.

He was sentenced to two years of probation during which he could not own or carry any weapon. He also had to surrender any guns, ammunition and gun licenses to police and take a batterer's intervention class.

Francis M. Doran Jr., Patterson's lawyer, appealed the jury's verdict, contending that there was insufficient evidence that Patterson did not control the firearm. He also argued that admission of the child's statement without her testimony at trial violated Patterson's Sixth Amendment right to confront an accuser. He also challenged the constitutionality of the firearm storage law.

Doran, a Natick attorney, said he intends to appeal yesterday's decision.

"I'm appealing it to preserve his otherwise unblemished record," he said.

The decision reads as if someone who is not within eyesight of his or her unsecured gun could be charged with a crime, he said.

"My take is that the right to bear arms in this commonwealth is suffering greatly as a result of decisions like this," Doran said, adding: "the real problem I have with the statute is it doesn't define what control is. The statute specifically exempts those that have a gun in their control or possession, so what's control?"

In the decision, Judge Gabrielle R. Wolohojian wrote that the statute is designed to prevent "unauthorized, incompetent, or irresponsible" people from using guns, so a gun is controlled by its owner when that person has it close enough to prevent immediate unauthorized use of the gun.

In this case, the gun was unholstered in an upstairs closet, while Patterson was downstairs. Children were in the house, including a young boy who was at times closer to the gun than Patterson, she wrote.

"The jury had more than sufficient evidence upon which to find that the gun was not within the defendant's control," Wolohojian wrote.

Wolohojian wrote that the Sixth Amendment applies to witnesses who testify against a defendant, not a girl who made the statement "spontaneously," without being questioned by police.

Wolohojian also wrote that the statute does not require a gun to be secured while someone is in control of it, so it does not "unconstitutionally interfere with an individual's ability to rely on a gun for lawful self-defense."

(Brian Benson may be reached at 508-634-7582 or bbenson@wickedlocal.com.)

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